Happy New Year!!

Happy New Year everyone!! Wow, it feels like forever since I've posted anything. I only have three real resolutions for this year and that one is definitely on there. I want to get back into my regular posting schedule and keep coming up with more and better ideas. I want to get and succeed at my dream job. And last but not least I want to keep eating healthy, continue my workout schedule, and keep losing weight. I lost over 30 pounds in about 1.5 years — most of that this year. Yay me!! I still have another 10-20 pounds to lose (continuing in a healthy, non-obsessive way) to reach my goal weight. Wish me luck. :)

Now, onto the post. One of my Christmas gifts this year was 'Get Bonded' a three piece nail polish gift set. It contained The Spy Who Loved Me, Goldeneye, and Skyfall — all three from the OPI Skyfall Collection, their James Bond holiday collection. I decided to use Goldeneye and The Spy Who Loved Me in a tape mani for New Year's. Wow, this mani was stunning!!! I left it on for four days. For a girl who changes her polish daily, sometimes multiple times a day, this shows just how much I loved this mani.

Honestly, I had every intention of passing on this collection. Looking at the swatches I didn't see anything truly stunning and worth searching for. Boy was I wrong!! I am so glad I got this as a gift. I couldn't manage to capture the true magnificence of Goldeneye. This picture gives an idea of the range of gold shades this glitter captures. The glitter was odd, kind of chunky and flaky, almost a metallic and went opaque for me in just two coats. It's not like any other glitter in my collection which is awesome!!

Here is another shot of Goldeneye before I started taping. This picture washes out the color but gives you a better look at the chunky quality of the glitter. I can't get over how close I came to missing this glitter, of choosing not to get it. How silly of me!!

I am equally as happy to own The Spy Who Loved Me. These polishes went on beautifully, look amazing together, and lasted the four days with not a hint of a chip. I did need to take a chisel to my nails to get Goldeneye off. It's misleading, looking so flaky and metallic. It makes you forget it's a glitter at heart. I think maybe it's harder to remove than regular glitters. I scrubbed and soaked and still had patches that just wouldn't come off. They're actually still there, like little golden bruises on my nails.You've heard my resolutions; what things do you hope, wish and/or promise to do in 2013?

Happy New Year's Eve!

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My Favourite Manicures of 2012

So yesterday I posted a list of my favourite polishes of 2012 and today it's time for my top ten of manicures this year. Again, these are in no particular order and I added the links to the original posts, if you want to take a closer look.

I know that there's nothing special with this last mani, it's just plain polish. But I wanted to add Oui to some list as I only got to wore it this year, but I came out 2011, so I didn't want to put it on the polish list. So I tought it deserved a place here, as it is really awesome polish!

So that was my top ten manicures of 2012. Which one was your favourite?

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Giant panda and giant panda cub water decals and videos

Hello everyone!

Giant panda eating bamboo water decals & Giant panda cub water decals

Bai Yun's sixth cub was born July 29, 2012, and is 5 months old this weekend. His name is Xiao Liwu, which means Little Gift. I have been following the development of Bai Yun's giant panda boy in San Diego Zoo online, and that's why I chose the Giant Panda and Giant Panda Cub water decals from KKCenterHk. The other reason was that I found it difficult to paint pandas on my tiny nails. And to my surprise pandas were popular in the Tokyo Nail Expo 2012 Nail Art Contest. Today I will show you the water decals, and some videos of "my" cute giant pandas. And you will find links to where you can buy the panda water decals, and my 10% coupon code. :-)

WATER DECALS: GIANT PANDA and GIANT PANDA CUB

Giant panda eating bamboo water decals

Giant panda cub water decals

Giant panda cub water decals (black and white)

Giant panda eating bamboo water decals (black and clear)

Me and my friend started to watch the cub grow on the PandaCam from San Diego Zoo. But soon we found summary- videos on YouTube. In the beginning he was a tiny little pink baby, but now he has got his typical panda colors, his eyes and ears are fully open, and he is getting quite big. Then he started crawling and managed to climb into the den after falling out. And now he has started climbing trees and tasting bamboo.

Giant panda cub water decals

Giant panda eating bamboo water decals

Giant panda cub water decals

Giant panda eating bamboo water decals, with bite marks

Giant panda cub water decals

Giant panda eating bamboo water decal

Giant panda cub water decals

Giant panda eating bamboo water decals

Here's the closest I could come to a panda:

Giant panda eating bamboo water decals

Giant panda eating bamboo water decals

Giant panda eating bamboo water decals

How I did this:

Black and white giant panda cub water decals

Black and clear giant panda eating bamboo water decals

Using water decals is easy, but as with everything else, the first time you have to know what to do. Emily (from Very Emily) has made a very good "How to" tutorial. Just click here.

I followed her tutorial, but found out that it was easier to use tweezers. If I just dropped the water decal in the warm water, the water decal separated from the paper, and I struggled to fish it up with my fingers and apply it the right way on the nail. I also found out that I had to work fast when moving the water decal around on the nail, to get it where I wanted it. The first time I managed to tear it, but I think that happened because I didn't put enough water on my nail before trying to apply the water decal.

Giant panda eating bamboo water decals & panda cub water decals

It is also important to find out which color your water decal has, so that you can choose a good background color. I found out the hard way that only the cub was in black and white, as you see on my thumb below. If you experience that your water decal doesn't go with the nail polish you have chosen, make sure that you keep it wet, and carefully slide it back to it's wet paper. If you look at the picture above, the water decals on the top row are black and clear, and the ones on the second row are white and black.

The images are in different sizes, and you can choose which direction you want them to face on your nails. So, if you want to, your hands can look like mirror image of each other.

Giant panda eating bamboo water decal

Giant panda cub water decals

Giant panda cub water decals

Giant panda cub water decals

I have small nails, but if you have bigger nails you will probably have room for some bamboo stamping or you can draw a nice background.

What I like with water decals is that it's a quick way to get nail art on my nails, and it looks professional. For me who am struggling to get nice lines when painting, and in addition have small nails and therefor little room for nail art, water decals are great.

I have tried to make panda nails twice before. Below you can see what I made for Polish Days Sentimental, but didn't think was good enough to show you.

On the middle finger, I tried to copy the panda nail art by Thriszha on the top of this page.

Stamped and painted panda nail art

And here is a part of what I wrote for Polish Days Sentimental:

I chose to make panda nail art, because the giant panda birth this summer has made me sentimental on many levels. Every time I see the panda cub, it makes me happy and sentimental. And when I see how well his mother Bai Yun takes care of him. But also how the staff in San Diego Zoo has learned to handle the cub. Like when they found out that if they held a hand under his head, he would press his head down as if he liked to cuddle and feel the warmth from the hand, and this made the veterinary exams a much better experience for him. He seemed calm, and didn't vocalize. But also it makes me sentimental when countries cooperate and do positive things, instead of stupid conflicts and war, or not treat the animals or humans that live in the country with respect. In this case, the cub's birth is a result of China and the US working together. And although Bai Yun now has given birth to her sixth cub, it's actually very difficult to help pandas get pregnant, and to save the species. What's also nice is that San Diego Zoo is filming the den and showing it to us. The Panda Cam is live 24/7. It also makes me sentimental that animal lovers from all over the world are watching over him.

I wish you a positive and happy new year! And thank you KKCenterHk for giving me these cute panda water decals!

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My Favourite Nail Polishes of 2012

Last year I did posts of my favourite polishes and favourite manicures of 2011 and I decided to do the same thing again this year. I think it's really fun to look back and see what I really enjoyed and loved. I've been really busy this year and I haven't had as much time for my blog as I would have liked, so in result there hasn't been as many posts here in my blog as I would have liked. Lately I've been trying to catch up and I try to keep posting more regularly next year. So there isn't really that many posts to choose my favourites from, but I still managed to choose my 10 favourite polishes and 10 favourite manicures of this year. Today I have the top ten of polishes and tomorrow it's going to be the manicures.

These aren't really in no particular order, because I just couldn't figure out what I would like the most and so on. I also included the links to my posts about the polishes if you want to take better look.

This is just so amazing that it just couldn't be one of my favourites. In fact, this is probably one of my all time favourite polishes. The color itself is soooo gorgeous and the quality is nothing but amazing as this is a one coater! I just love this so much!

This is one polish that hasn't been seen too much in other blogs. But I really think this deserves more attention, it's really a gorgeous purple! The combination of the base color and the shimmer is also quite unique to me and the quality was great too as you can almost get away with only one coat if you are careful.

What can I say about this, it's just so gorgeous! And this is one of those polishes that is even better seen in real life that in pics. In here I have two coats over black and I have to say this is the best multichrome glitter that I own, it's just pure awesomeness! I just wish the bottle of this was bigger.

Of course I had to include Fantasy Fire to my list, it's just so amazing. And for purple lover like me, it's really a must have polish. I'm sooo glad that it is more available nowadays, so more people can get it without paying the ridicilous prices on ebay.

I wasn't really sure if I should put this on the list or not, but the fact is that I really enjoyed wearing this and this a really a great polish in every aspect. I do love glitter polishes and this is really great quite neutral one, but the amazing sparkle makes it to stand out. And I love the name of this polish too, it's so cute.

I really had to pick one of the Color Club's Halo Hues polishes to my list as the quality of these is really outstanding. And colorwise this was really my favourite one. The holographic effect is awesome and like I said, these have probably the best quality of all the linear holo polishes that I've tried.

I loooove OPI Extravagance and Miss Conduct is like a baby sister of that polish, so of course I love it! The color is so rich and it's holographic, so there's really no way that I wouldn't love this one.